THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN (Part II)Faith in the Existence of God

The Universality of faith in the existence of God as a manifestation of spiritual life.

You ask, "How can you say that everything has a spirit with the manifestation you mentioned? Also, are there not people who do not know God?" These people do not know the True God, but they do know He exists; everyone confesses this. Believing there is a God, and wishing to define more precisely that He exists, they have gone astray and called God that which is not God: Some call the sun God, others the moon or stars, others say something else. Not everyone, however, has strayed so grossly. When God scattered the people on the face of the earth after the tower of Babel, they carried with them what were up to that time traditional, sensible concepts of God as the invisible Spirit, Creator, Providence, Judge, and Requiter. All hold Him to be the Creator, Providence and Requiter; but not all hold Him to be an immaterial Spirit, instead, "(they) changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things" (Romans 1:23). "When they knew God, that is, know that God exists, they glorified Him not as God" (Romans 1:21). Of the eastern people, the Persians and Indians, both Asian and American, have the most elevated concept of God. The Greeks and Romans belittled God, so to speak. The American Indians, for example, call God the Universal Spirit; invisible, all embracing. This is a very lofty notion, and in and of itself, it cannot be carried further than this. The Asian Indians went deeper in their comprehension of God; but, after maintaining the concept of His invisibility, all-powerfulness and activity in everything, they intended to define His creative and industrious activities more precisely, and came up with a lot of concepts that had no foundation, and wrote a lot of fantastic stories.

So it is in this sense that there are people who do not know God! Not in the sense that there are people who do not believe in the existence of God. Some travelers have claimed that they encountered people who did not know God at all and did not venerate Him. Most likely, they just did not hear a confession of faith or see any worship of God, and in order to have ascertained one way or the other, they should have stayed among these people longer...

Thus, put entirely out of your mind the idea that there are people who do not acknowledge the existence of God. There are some scientists who think they can do without God, and who talk and write books as if He did not exist. But while their tongues and pens weave such empty words, their hearts say something else. They make themselves out to be nonbelievers, but very uncertainly, so as to successfully get away with it in their own conscience.

Knowing God, everyone has a conscience, honors God and prays to Him, and believes in the future life, in which everyone will receive according to his deeds. The spirit is the force that sustains all such beliefs and convictions. We will assume that within each person is a spirit, the highest aspect of human life. It is the force that draws that person from the visible to the invisible, from the temporal to the eternal, from the creation to the Creator; it is this characteristic of man that distinguishes him from all the other living creatures on earth. It is possible to weaken this force to varying degrees, or to pervert its requirements, but it is not possible to utterly suppress it or annihilate it. It is an integral part of our human nature, and manifests itself in each person in its own way.

(To be continued)

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MY BLESSING TO ALL OF YOU

The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

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Glory Be To GOD For All Things!

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With sincere agape in His Holy DiakoniaThe sinner and unworthy servant of God